Kavon and Darren believe they finally have the life they want--a lead on O’Brien, a better understanding of the failures that have plagued the team, and time to nurture the bond between them as shamans and lovers. However they’ve gotten involved in magical politics, and that has consequences that neither of them could foresee. Magic is changing, and Kavon and Darren are in the center of a coming storm. In the past, Kavon’s only fear was that he might inadvertently damage Darren, and he is painfully aware that he has hurt his lover before. He’s vowed to never make that mistake again, but new forces threaten their relationship and pose a special threat to Darren. With the danger growing more intense, Kavon struggles to find a way to protect the ones he loves and Darren realizes that the magic that gave him his heart’s desire could take everything away just as quickly. Magic is a double-edged sword and the two lovers have to find a way to wield the weapon before it becomes the instrument of their death.

SOME POSSIBLE SPOILERS FROM THE PREVIOUS BOOKS IN THE REVIEW, BEWARE.

Review,

Dear Lyn Gala.

I once again one clicked this book when my friend Raine told me it was out. We are catching up with Kavon, Daren and the rest of the team when they are once again trying to catch the murderous shaman O’Brien who was such a pain in their collective behinds (but especially Kavon’s and Darren’s) in the first two books. Well, to be precise he did the most of his visible damage in book one, in book two the team faced some eh “colleagues” of his and we were not actually shown much of the hunt for him, just told about it.

Now Kavon learns that Canada law enforcement lost O’Brien but in order to get involved he needs to get political again and that’s not something Kavon likes (or so he claims). We have delicate relationships between FBI teams in the same offices apparently, add to this a different country, throw some delicate power struggles between shamans in different areas of the world who may prefer Egypt to Vatican (very significant centers of magical and religious activity in this world) or none of the above, and you get some explosive mix. And of course our guys and the rest of the team is right in the middle of all of this.

Of course whether Kavon and Darren liked politics or not, they gotten to be a bit more skilled in it and off to Canada they go to try and catch O’Brien.

“Oh? Boucher went to White. When that didn’t work, you went to McLean. And then Boucher goes all nuclear and insults Hassan. These are three people I have made it my life’s mission to never speak to. Never.” Les pronounced the word so it had three syllables just to emphasize his point. “You two are fine with politics; you just hate losing.”

I will let you to guess on your own whether the main criminal Bad in the story which is romance as much as an adventure gets what was coming to him. I thought the resolution of this particular storyline was okay – nothing was left hanging, but also there was nothing really surprising added to the “mystery”. I put “mystery” in quotes because in the previous two books I was not really happy with how reveals of the villains played out, I mean I was fine with the action, I just did not think it was really mysterious, but now I think it did not really meant to be. As I said, nothing really surprising was added to that.

However, what I really liked is how the action was used to show the characters learn and grow and show us some angles of their personalities we may not have noticed yet. I am talking about all the interactions between the members of the team. They are still reeling from the consequences of the betrayal in the second book, and while nobody gets out of jail free card in that department – everybody deals with their guilt differently and no, we don’t spend a lot of page space on it, but it is impossible not to notice. Then we get new team members and Darren and everybody else interacting with them and Darren specifically figuring out how he was messing up in book one and acknowledging and moving on. It was just nice to see adult interaction I could relate to – not to all the action, but to the complexities of human communication I guess. As an aside I really liked the fact that “team looking stupid” was addressed head on and I liked that it was okay and this will pass too. Really liked how all of this was handled.

“When Coretta lined all the facts up like that, it made the Talent team seem incompetent. Okay, it made them all seem like absolute morons who couldn’t see a criminal coming from fifty yards. Since he didn’t have anything to say, an awkward silence fell, and Darren was left watching tourists check out at the front desk. When his phone vibrated, he told Coretta, “They’re five minutes out in a taxi.”

I may have to correct myself – I stated above that there was nothing surprising in the resolution of “let’s catch the murderer shaman” storyline. There was something I did not expect. It was over at about fifty percent of the book. I was genuinely taken aback for a second, because you have to understand – this was main action arc for two and a half books and to have it be over in the middle naturally begged the question as to what would happen next.

Then I learned the reason for human trafficking case to be shown in the background several times – the team now threw the full efforts of everybody in that department and for the investigation related reasons the team gets on the plane again and flies to Texas. While all of this happening Darren decides that he needs to try and take him being a Shaman (with Bennu I mean) more seriously and try and figure out why Bennu chose him.

Have I mentioned that Bennu still rocked and kicked ass? Well he did. And we learn stuff and meet a hummingbird with anger management issues.

Let’s talk about learning more stuff now. I don’t know whether this was supposed to have the door open for more books in the series, but if not, then the story shared with us a major danger coming to this world pretty soon. And then it stopped. I am sorry, what?

I still loved it, and most of what I wanted to know was answered and the guys were solid and female team members were even more awesome in this book, but if no more books are coming, I am at loss as to why this new information was given to the readers.